It is common practice to perform assays, such as an ELISA (Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay), using a multiwell plate or Microtiter™ plate or microplate, which have multiple small wells, e.g., 96, 384, or 1536, arranged in a 2:3 rectangular matrix. The microplate may be constructed to use the entire plate in an assay, or may provide a capability to use a single row or “strip” of wells out of the microplate matrix, to run a smaller assay. This strip capability permits a single microplate to be used multiple times, using different wells (or groups of wells) each time. In that case, a row or strip of wells may be separated from the matrix and used to run the desired assay. Some products provide a tray, crate or support frame to hold the multiwell plate and the separated strips of wells.
Microplates having “strip” capability (or format) offer the advantage of greater flexibility in testing or diagnostics. They permit the number of tests or assays performed to be adjusted to the number of samples desired to be tested, and not predetermined by the size of the multiwell plate being used.
Examples of multiwell plates having strip capability include: 96 Well Polystyrene Stripwell® Microplate, sold by Corning (including Strip Holder “egg crate” and 96 Well Strip Ejector, and custom multi-color strips); Pierce™ 8-Well Polystyrene Strip Plate, sold by ThermoFisher Scientific; Immulon® Microtiter™ 96-Well Plates and Strips, sold by ThermoScientific (including Removawell™ Assemblies and Strips, and Dividastrips™ Assemblies with 2×8 strips that separate into two 1×8 strips, and Removawell™ Holder that holds eight 12-well or twelve 8-well strips); and 96 Well F8 Strip High Binding ELISA Microplate, sold by Greiner Bio-One GmbH.
However, multi-well plates for running assays are very manual intensive, prone to human error, and do not provide highly precise, repeatable, automated, quantitative assay results for ELISAs and other assays. Thus, it would be desirable to have a device that provides high quality assay results and also provides the scalable flexibility offered by multiwell “strip” capability.